


When We Come Back Home

by estriel



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Boys In Love, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:20:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23376043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estriel/pseuds/estriel
Summary: When they come back, it feels a bit like a dream, like the world is brand new and doesn’t make much sense yet.
Relationships: Javier Fernández/Yuzuru Hanyu
Comments: 10
Kudos: 58





	When We Come Back Home

**Author's Note:**

> A word of **warning - this touches on the current topics (pandemic, quarantine, crisis) and the anxiety relating to them.** So if this is triggering for you, or you'd rather not read about it, then please skip. There is a happy ending, and this takes place in a post-coronavirus time and space, but still. I hope it is not too soon, I just had these ideas and felt like I needed to get them out on paper. 
> 
> Sending love and positive thoughts to all of you, and let's all look forward to the next season. <3

When they come back, it feels a bit like a dream, like the world is brand new and doesn’t make much sense yet. Everyone hugs like they have just won something – and they have, Yuzu realizes, not a competition but maybe a battle, maybe a whole war. Somebody lets out a laugh, half happiness, half tearful relief. They touch the ice, bending down to brush their fingers over its surface – everyone does now what Yuzu does every time. He reaches down, too, and greets the ice like the old friend it is. “I missed you,” he mumbles in Japanese, and he is sure they all share that same sentiment, even though in the larger scope of things, missing skating had seemed almost trivial during the past few months. 

Yuzu doesn’t cry, not at the rink, holding back his tears, deciding to be the strong one, the _senior_ one, the anchor for the others. He had been there before, after all, been a _survivor_. Now they all are.

He opens his arms and lets Katya sob against his chest for a moment, remembering how she had hugged him that one time when he needed it. When her breathing evens out a little, he gently pats her hair and says: “Let’s go back to work, yeah?”

She nods and wipes at her tears, and joins in with the others who are all now starting to move, reawakening their muscle memory, reacquainting themselves with the sound and smell and feel of the ice beneath their feet.

*

Yuzu does cry at the rink a couple of weeks later. It happens when the doors of the rink open to reveal a familiar figure, a familiar smile, a familiar voice that Yuzu had been missing even before this whole mess had started.

He stops mid-stroke, and simply stares, his body both numb and strangely energized at the same time.

It had been a few weeks into the crisis when Yuzu lost it, having just watched the news segment on the developments in Spain, and called Javi, even though that was not something they had ever done, normally. A few texts here and there, yes, but not calls, certainly not video calls, and definitely not the daily conversations that soon became the light of Yuzu’s days. It had surprised Yuzu at first, how quickly and naturally it became easy to talk, or just sit in front of their respective cameras doing something else, sharing a smile here and there, and listening to each other’s breath.

He is not sure when exactly he had realized he was in love with Javi. It was probably not new. It had, probably, been the case for years, now made painfully obvious by the distance and the separation, the constant fear of something happening to Javi, over there in Spain where hundreds of people fell victim to the virus every day. He is not sure when exactly Javi had come to the same conclusion, but he is fairly certain that Javi did, in fact, realize, too. Maybe it was that moment in one of their video calls, with Javi unshaven and Yuzu’s hair too long, hanging well past his ears already, when Javi had reached out and touched the screen, pressing his hand against it as if he wanted nothing more than to _touch_, if he _could_. Javi had laughed when he had realized what he had done, a little embarrassed, and Yuzu had stopped his apology with: “Don’t say sorry. I feel same.”

Now all of those calls and words and wistful smiles coalesce, and Yuzu finds himself moving, skating to the edge of the ice and stepping off without any heed for his blades, stepping into the arms Javi holds open for him, dodging everyone else’s attention to focus on Yuzu.

Yuzu does cry then, inhaling the scent of Javi’s skin as he buries his face in Javi’s neck, and he can barely breathe from being crushed so tightly in an embrace. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about the others staring, doesn’t notice the amused giggle from where Evgenia is standing somewhere to the side with Jason, or the way Brian raises his eyebrow at Tracy, who just shrugs, and smiles.

“You’re here, you come, I didn’t know, you didn’t tell, you’re so bad,” Yuzu sobs, and maybe his fingers are digging into Javi’s shoulders in a way that hurts a bit, but Javi doesn’t seem to mind, since he only holds him closer. “Don’t leave,” he breathes finally, pulling off a fraction and looking at Javi, who is a little blurry around the edges through Yuzu’s tearful gaze. “Don’t leave, please.”

“I won’t,” Javi says, and from the way his voice trembles a little, Yuzu can tell that he has shed a tear or two, too. “I’ve come back home.”

*

It doesn’t feel sudden, or too fast, too soon, too much, none of it does. If anything, it feels way overdue, like spring at the end of an endless winter, anticipated and fervently prayed for. _At last_, is all Yuzu can think when they are alone at Javi’s new place, naked in Javi’s bed, wrapped in each other as if nothing else existed in the world. It feels perfect, Javi’s skin pressed hotly against his own, Javi’s tongue tangled inside his mouth, the sweaty mess of their love-making.

And when they lie together, after, neither of them willing to let go, neither of them willing to sacrifice the simple luxury of having this – being together, being in love, being _alive_ – Yuzu finally feels like the world makes at least a little bit of sense again.


End file.
